


Three to Four (The 1861 Remix)

by twokisses



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M, Melancholy, Simon Snow is great with kids and horses, it's still basically slice of life, lots of flashbacks, or is it light?, somehow even when my fic has time travel and is set in victorian england, to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24951007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twokisses/pseuds/twokisses
Summary: The witching hour is said to be a time of night when unusual and magical occurrences take place.In 1861, a young man named Simon Snow meets with someone from the future.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 45
Kudos: 103
Collections: Carry On Remix





	Three to Four (The 1861 Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Honeyed_Hufflepuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Honeyed_Hufflepuff/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Witching Hour](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21888907) by [The_Honeyed_Hufflepuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Honeyed_Hufflepuff/pseuds/The_Honeyed_Hufflepuff). 



> So - if it isn't already obvious, this is a remix of The_Honeyed_Hufflepuff's fic, Witching Hour. I do believe this is one of Ash's lesser known fics, but from the first time I read it, it became one of my favourites by her! She wrote it for the COC 2019, and in about 1000+ words, she captured an incredibly emotional and complex relationship between our two favourite boys, in a super interesting AU scenario that captivated me immediately. When I saw that I had received Ash as my assignment for the remix event, this fic was the first one that came to mind. My remix takes the point of view of Simon in Ash's story, because I was just so so intrigued by him and wanted to explore who he was, where he came from, etc. Obviously, my take on this story is a lot longer, but honestly it's all because of the many, many amazing points and possibilities that Ash highlighted in her original story - there were so many things to play with! 
> 
> That was very long but honestly what is a remix without the original work and its author? So thank you, Ash, for writing such a gorgeous fic for us to read, and for me to have selected to remix! It's been such a fun time and also an honour. I really hope you - and all the other readers here - enjoy this!
> 
> Also, thank you to the amazing, wonderful, lovely people who beta'd this fic for me, [selkie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unenthusiastic_mermaid), [aralias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias) and [caity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caitybug) (as well as my sister, who always gets my shittiest first drafts and therefore spares everyone else)! Y'all helped SO MUCH in helping me pull all the ?? aspects of this fic together! So thank you. x

It was nighttime over England, more specifically over Hampshire, and more specifically still over the little cottage on the edge of the grand Pitch Manor estate. This was the coachman’s cottage, and it was a simple affair: a single room downstairs that was both sitting area and kitchen, connected to a flight of stairs leading up to the second floor. Directly on from the staircase was the room in which slept the coachman and his wife. But to the left was the room which interests us, for within, in one of the two beds that held the coachman’s five children between them, lay his eldest son.

This young man’s name was Simon Snow Salisbury.

Of all the inhabitants in that small house, Simon was the only one awake. He had been so since everybody else had gone to sleep, and that is to say, a very long time. But he did not appear tired. Rather, as he lay in his bed, staring up at the old, peeling paint of the ceiling with his sister curled up and asleep against his side… there seemed to be an air of _waiting_ about him. A light, fine tension that hummed in his body, even as he lay quite still. It was the tension of a man who knew he was about to do something.

Indeed, a moment or so after the one in which we found him, his eyes—which were by most accounts, a pleasant but unremarkable shade of blue—left the ceiling in favour of his sister’s face, as if he were checking to see that she was still asleep. She was, and having satisfied himself on the matter, he shifted one inch to the side and removed from under the waist of his trousers a small, circular object.

It was a very old pocket watch, one that had belonged to his father before him, and his father’s father before that, and so on into the Salisbury family’s male lineage. This, he had discreetly kept on his person when he had been dressing down for bed, and now he peered at it in the darkness (that his eyes had long adjusted to), to find that it was a mere ten minutes away from three o’clock in the morning.

And this, in fact, was what he had been tense, and ready, and waiting for.

The witching hour.

It went against every warning the village mothers—Normal and Mage alike—gave their children to be leaving the house at this time of night, the magical hour wherein the veil between the living and the dead thinned, and witches came into their full power, and all such other things. Although the mothers who fell into the latter category better understood how much truth these stories actually held.

In the world of mages—which was, in Victorian England, as interwoven with and hidden from the Normal world as it is today—only highly accomplished mages were advised to be about the streets at this time. But not all families had the luxury of choosing to abide by this rule; for one such as Simon, who earned a portion of his family’s living from caring for the Pitches’ horses, occasionally leaving the safety of the house was simply something that had to be done. After all, animals could not decide when to fall ill.

Even so, for as long as Simon had been old enough to venture out into the night on his own, his trips had been uneventful. Not once had he tripped over a rogue mischief sprite, nor stumbled across an old witch’s seance. He had not encountered any of the dreadful things his mother had warned him of.

But he had encountered something.

And that thing—no, but it was not a _thing_ , it was a being, a person—was the furthest thing from dreadful that Simon had ever dreamed. That person was the object of all his thoughts at that moment in his bed, the focus of all the aforementioned humming, nervous energy. One who was more attuned to it would have right away identified it as butterflies in the stomach. But Simon was not thinking much of this at that time. He was rather intent on escaping the house unnoticed.

His breath drew in quickly, and another glance at his sister told him she was still asleep. Very, very slowly, he withdrew his arm out from under her, slid out of the bed, and stole across the old wooden floorboards to the solitary dresser in one corner of the room. Here he began to dress himself in the clothes he would wear on a normal day of work on the Pitch grounds: trousers, white shirt and waistcoat. Into one of its pockets he slipped his watch, and into the other, his wand (which he had retrieved from beneath a neat stack of his clothes). He also put his coat over one arm, for the nights were getting colder.

All of this done, the one thing that remained was to obtain light. There were unlit hills and paths on the Manor grounds between the cottage and his destination, and he did not trust himself to navigate them with his eyes alone (even as adjusted to the darkness as they were). Atop the dresser was a kerosene lamp, and next to it, a box of matches. Simon took one out of the box and struck it—praying it would not rouse the other children behind him—lit the wick, and then fit the glass chimney over the flame.

All seemed to have gone to plan. And he had already begun moving towards the door, feeling rather proud of himself, when a small, sweet voice called out to him:

“Si?”

Simon stilled, silently cursing his rotten luck, and turned back to his bed. His little sister—whose name was Charlotte—was sitting up amongst the bedclothes and staring at him with wide brown eyes. In the lamplight, her hair was more golden than ever.

“Where y’going, Si?” asked Charlotte, and Simon thanked Merlin that she had the good sense to speak in a voice just above a whisper.

“Shh,” he said quickly, and made his way back to the bed. He crouched in front of her, and she was so small that their eyes became level this way. “M’just heading to the barn, Lottie,” he said.

“The barn?” whispered Charlotte. “Why?”

“There’s something I need to check on,” said Simon.

Her eyes became very big. “Is it Fanny again?” she asked, in a rather conspiratorial manner. Fanny was Simon’s favourite of the Pitch horses, and she had been rather ill some time ago. “Are y’going to check on her?”

“Yes,” said Simon, “I’ll check on her.” And he silently vowed to do so, even if he hadn’t intended on it, so he wouldn’t have lied to Charlotte. “Now then, go to sleep,” he said.

Lottie, her curiosity satisfied, and her love and admiration for her brother so strong, did as she was told. And Simon ruffled her hair and gave her the kiss she asked for, and then successfully snuck out of the room and closed the door behind him.

On the landing of the second floor, Simon reached into his pocket and withdrew his wand. There were a very many spells that might come in handy during one’s nighttime escape from a house. This soon became evident, as, having managed to descend the stairs without upsetting any of the crankiest bits of the floorboards, Simon found a very fat cat sleeping directly in front of the door. It had been a stray not a few months ago, who had had a liking for sneaking onto the grounds and causing a cacophony near the kennels. This had been remedied when Charlotte had all but adopted it, but now it had near-permanent residency in the Salisbury cottage, and that was a problem of its own.

No one but Charlotte could pick the damn thing up without being mauled within an inch of his life, and causing an unwanted racket at the same time. But Simon had encountered this enough over the past three odd months of nighttime sneaking, and he cast a quick _**“Mind the grease!”**_ on the cat without having to think much of it. The cat slid harmlessly out of the way, still fast asleep. Simon managed to slip out the back door undetected.

The barn was ten minutes’ walk away from the cottage. Simon made the trip surely. In the middling distance, Pitch Manor sprawled across the landscape, its many walls and pillars illuminated by hundreds of candles and torches. Simon gazed on it as he walked, and wondered, as he often did, what it was like to be so rich, and have so fine a house, and so many servants at one’s disposal. This was not to imply that he _wanted_ such a life—he was content with his own, doing honest work for hearty meals, always eaten at a table with his family. But it was normal to fantasise about things so far out of one’s own realm of possibility. It was something to pass the time with.

The barn eventually came up on his right, up against an immaculate line of trees. Simon pushed open the heavy wooden doors, and the light from his lamp fell into the darkness beyond, dimly revealing the rows of stalls inside. Honouring his word to Charlotte, he went to peek into Fanny’s stall and found her asleep in one dark corner, as quiet and serene as a horse generally can be. Then he walked towards the back of the barn, where neat stacks of hay lined the walls and were brought into stark relief by his lamp. The light danced about as he moved towards his preferred place to sit, then settled down as he did, so that the space became filled with a calm, steady golden glow. Simon pulled his watch out to check the time: five minutes past three now. Baz should arrive at any moment.

 _Baz,_ he thought, turning it over in his mind, for he truly loved the name. _Baz,_ or _Basilton_ , or, if Simon were feeling spiteful, for Baz truly hated it when he called him thus, _Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch_.

A man from the future.

It was nearly three months ago that Simon had met him. Fanny had been ill then, and Simon had had to visit her every night. He could still remember her manner as he had tended to her, distressed and whining, and he had been crouched in the straw before her, focused on his work such that he could cause her as little pain as possible, when he had heard the sound.

It had been so distinct a sound, but so utterly odd and impossible in a barn at that time of night, that Simon had very nearly dismissed and forgotten all about it. But then he had heard it again—a voice quietly cursing to itself at the back of the barn.

It had sounded very much like: _“God damn it—I swear I left it in the back seat…”_

Simon had frozen, and waited, and listened with strained ears. But when no more sound had been forthcoming, he’d shushed Fanny with a soothing hand on her side, taken a pitchfork off the wall and, as silently as could, made his way towards the back of the barn.

Upon first seeing the young man, Simon had thought he was a ghost.

He had certainly not been made of the flesh and bone that Simon was—Simon could see right through him to the wall beyond. His skin had been the palest of silver, and the rest of him variations of that colour: greys in his clothing, the darkest of all in his hair, which Simon could only imagine was pitch black in reality (if indeed, he _was_ real). It was longer than that of any man Simon had ever seen, but he was most certainly male.

Simon had been frozen in place, feeling all-overish and strange, the pitchfork clenched in his hand as he had stared at the back of the ghostly young man before him. But the next moment, the man had turned and spotted him, and his cry of surprise took _Simon_ so by surprise that he had nearly stumbled back into one of the stalls. Nearly.

There had been a few moments of stunned staring, between the two of them, and Simon’s heartbeat had been the loudest sound in the universe.

 _“Who are you?”_ the young man had said, apparently being the braver of the two of them.

 _“Simon,”_ Simon had said, and then added, _“Snow.”_ And then, _“Who are_ you _?”_

And the man had drawn himself up in height, such that Simon could see that he was very much taller than Simon, and had a long, proud nose that tickled at Simon’s memory for some strange reason, and he had said, _“I… am Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch.”_

 _Pitch,_ he had said, and Simon was certain he had heard it right. But he knew the faces of every resident currently in Pitch Manor, and had seen their ancestral portraits (if this young man was, indeed, one of their long-gone relatives), but he had never seen this Tyrannus before. Simon was sure he would have remembered him, if he had, for his was a striking face. Unusual, in ways that Simon could not place his finger on—was it the shape of his eyes, or the curve of his brow, or perhaps his jaw? He looked slightly exotic, as if he had come into England on one of the great ships Simon had before seen at the ports. But there was a hint of home in those features as well. Simon had never seen such a face in his life, but it had captivated him immediately.

Where had this young man come from?

He would learn, in time, that he had not come from a different _place_ —in fact, they were in exactly the same place—but rather a different time. ( _“What is the year where you are?” “2016.” “That’s tosh!”_ ) And he would learn that Tyrannus—or as he soon emphatically convinced Simon to call him, Baz—was the son of one Malcolm Grimm, and a Natasha Pitch from the Egyptian branch of the Pitch family, which Simon hadn’t an idea even existed before then. But it did make sense of the slightly strange mold of his face that was so different from what Simon knew.

They had talked that first night; they had talked for a long time, and it had been Simon’s turn to ask a question of Baz—for they had invented a system rather early, to make a sort of game of it—when Baz began to fade from view.

The surprise and dawning desperation that Simon had felt had been mirrored clearly on Baz’s face, in the moments that he began to disappear. _“Baz, you’re—” “You are too—Simon—”_ But Baz had gone before he could complete his sentence. When Simon had checked his watch later, he had seen that it was exactly four o’clock. The witching hour had ended.

Simon had spent the remaining hours until dawn, and the whole of the next day, in a confused haze. His mother, Lucy, had commented on his being out of sorts at breakfast. His father, David, had snapped at him to keep his mind from drifting when he forgot to clean the riding equipment after Old Man Pitch had taken one of the horses out. But all Simon could think of was Baz, and how he wished he could have found out more about him before he had disappeared, and, if Simon went to the barn again that night, if he would be there.

He was.

And so began the acquaintance that brought Simon to the current moment, sitting quietly in the Pitches’ barn at three and some in the morning, awaiting the appearance of the young man with whom he had been meeting, every night without fail, since that first fateful moment. The young man who was without a doubt the cause of that peculiar, and wonderful, fluttering in Simon’s stomach.

The young man who was appearing to be rather late indeed.

Fifteen minutes had passed, and still there was no sign of Baz. It was not like him. A fiend for punctuality, Baz had a certain tendency to get tetchy and huffy whenever Simon arrived late for their nightly appointments. But Simon could understand—in the hour that was all the time they had together, several minutes made a difference.

Hints of nerves and uneasiness had crept up on Simon. It moved him inward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together, and his mind was busy with many unpleasant questions. Had Baz been detained? Was he simply not coming? Had he grown tired, or bored, of Simon’s company? It was an awfully unsettling feeling, one that Simon, who spent most of his time thinking with his actions rather than his mind, was wholly unprepared for, and so was especially vulnerable to. The dark corners of the barn seemed closer every minute. He undid two of his shirt’s buttons at his throat, and pushed his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. And he waited.

It seemed an age later before he heard a familiar voice in the still air:

“Snow.”

Simon’s head shot up.

There he was—Baz, in all shades of shimmering silver, insubstantial enough to permit a vague view of the hay behind him. He was really a very tall fellow, several inches taller than Simon when they stood by each other, and Simon was not small by any means. His hair was loose about his cheeks and shoulders, and he wore a coat that closed over the front with two vertical rows of buttons—which were more buttons than seemed necessary for their purpose, in Simon’s opinion.

“Baz,” said Simon, and his mouth was turned up into a smile before he was aware of it having moved at all. He pushed himself to his feet and wiped his palms—which had gotten unpleasantly sweaty from all the uncertainty of before—against the backs of his trousers. “Was starting to think you weren’t coming,” he said. He did his best to conceal the weight of that statement.

“My sister,” said Baz. He looked very slightly annoyed, in that way that is not quite annoyance when it is in regard to a sibling one really loves. “She was awake. I didn’t want her following me out here.”

Baz’s sister, Mordelia, was eight years of age in his year. In effect, that made her one hundred and sixty-three years Charlotte’s junior.

“That’s alright, then,” said Simon.

“Did you have trouble getting out tonight?” asked Baz. He had begun reaching into his coat with its too many buttons.

“Woke Lottie up,” said Simon. “Was too loud, I think.”

“But she went back to sleep?”

“Yeah, yeah. Not as frightful as Mordy, is she?”

Baz made a face then that was the picture of older-brotherly exasperation. “No one is,” he said. And as he did, he removed his hand from his coat, and in it was a book. Its cover had a clean, glossy look to it, but the illustration that it bore, a painting that appeared to be done in oil, was of the sort that Simon had before seen at Pitch Manor. The title was spelled out in bold words at the top, and the name of the author just beneath: GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Charles Dickens. Beneath Mr Dickens’ name was a logo of a small, odd-looking bird.

Simon had seen this work of Mr Dickens’ several times during his trips into town, but the versions displayed in the windows of the bookstores had been dark, and plain, and had very small text on them. They were none of them nearly as inviting as the edition Baz now held. Not that it would have made a difference even if they _were_ , for Simon would not have purchased them either way.

 _“Truth be told, m’not good at it,”_ Simon had told Baz before. _“At reading.”_

Their conversations had quite frequently turned to books in the early days of their acquaintance, for Baz loved them, adored them, and none so much as the books of Charles Dickens, who was at the height of his literary career in Simon’s time. Every time this had happened before, Simon had simply nodded along to Baz’s opinions, and then changed the topic. But the night he had made his confession of sorts, Baz had been quoting the most beautiful lines from a Dickens novel, and it had made Simon wish, the way he had never wished before, that he could know the entirety of the text that they had come from. And that had finally compelled him to tell Baz the truth.

 _“Did you go to school?”_ Baz had asked then, and Simon had flushed.

 _“I went,”_ he said, perhaps sounding more defensive than he had wanted to. _“But it was—it wasn’t—m’not—”_ Fittingly, mortifyingly, the words had been hard in coming. But he had been embarrassed and ashamed, for the truth was that he had encountered many young men of Baz’s place in life, and they were, at the best of times, dismissive of him. And at the worst, they were cruel.

But Baz had been looking at him a certain way, and had only said, _“Use your words, Simon,”_ in a manner so patient and encouraging, that Simon had felt safe enough with him to speak.

He had not gone to a public school. The whole of his education had been contained within the walls of the local church. _“S’what the paper writers call ragged schools, I think,”_ said Simon, and Baz had asked permission then to “Google it” on his “phone”. (Simon had watched as he did it, with extremely wide eyes, and asked more questions than Baz could properly answer.) After satisfying himself on what these ragged schools were, Baz had looked at Simon and asked, in somewhat of a tentative voice, _“So you never went to Watford?”_

 _Watford._ The Watford School of Magicks, infamous for the power trials one had to pass to enter, and the impenetrable elitism of its school body, had only ever been a dream for Simon. Only the children from Old Families received a proper, formal education in magic at Watford. The less fortunate learned family spells from their parents, or whatever could be used to carry out their work more effectively. Simon knew a dozen spells to calm horses and clean their stalls, but _refined_ magic, _powerful_ magic, such as that which was born from literature, would always be beyond him.

Baz had become very quiet after Simon had explained all of this to him, but would not explain why.

The following night, he had appeared with a copy of _Great Expectations_ in his hand.

_“This was published in July of 1861, and it became one of the most highly-quoted books in history. If you’ll let me… I’d like to read it to you. And I’d like to teach you the magic it created.”_

And he had.

Baz was now moving to sit on the floor. Simon did the same, so that they faced each other—two young men, one solid and the other insubstantial.

“Aren’t you cold, Snow?” asked Baz as he settled down, crossing his legs, and looking at Simon’s bare forearms.

“I’ve a coat, if I need,” said Simon, shrugging.

“Is it raining where you are?”

“No,” said Simon. “Is it there?” He looked at Baz, then, properly. “Your hair is wet.”

“A tragedy,” said Baz, which made Simon smile. “The things I do for you.”

He then turned his eyes back to the book that he held in his lap, opening it to the marked page. Simon reached to drag his lamp closer to the two of them across the floor. He did not know if the light would even reach Baz, where he was, centuries later. But he liked the idea of it.

“We stopped at the bit with Mr Jaggers, didn’t we?” asked Simon, leaning forward to look at the neat rows of printed alphabets. Baz’s long, elegant index finger skimmed down the page to the correct spot.

“Yes, this is the place,” he said, tapping it primly. “Ready, Snow?”

Simon nodded yes, and, clearing his throat once, Baz began to read.

_“‘There being to my knowledge a respectable lodging-house in Essex Street, the back of which looked into the Temple, and was almost within hail of my windows, I first of all repaired to that house, and was so fortunate…’”_

The lamp gave a warm hue to the intangible silver something that Baz was made of, at least in Simon’s time. And though it would have been much easier to focus on the story being told if he were to look elsewhere around the barn, Simon always found himself looking at Baz instead, at his features with their hints of exotic, faraway lands, relaxed and focused on the words of Charles Dickens. At his eyes as they skipped easily across the page, and his mouth as it shaped the words an infinitesimal time later. Even sitting cross-legged on the floor before Simon, Baz’s posture was perfectly straight. Simon’s, during these readings, was especially deplorable by contrast, for he could never help himself leaning in towards Baz, drawn in by his person as much as the stories Simon had yearned so much to know.

The words themselves came alive through Baz’s voice, which was full, and rich, and filled the space around them without being overpowering. There was an expressiveness to the way he read the characters as well, that drew one in without notice. Simon often received the strange impression of being cradled within a calm, lilting sphere of sound. Outside, an owl might hoot lonesomely in the night, or one of the dog’s barking may echo out across the grounds from the kennels, but otherwise the world, except for Baz, and Simon, and the palpable closeness between the two of them sitting in a back corner of the barn together, did not exist.

 _“‘And yet it looked so like it, sir,’ I pleaded with a downcast heart,’”_ Baz was now saying, and he paused to turn the page before continuing, _“‘Not a particle of evidence, Pip,’ said Mr Jaggers, shaking his head and gathering up his skirts. ‘Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.’_ … There, Snow.”

Baz leaned forward then, such that their foreheads might have brushed if it were possible, sending a fine shiver down Simon’s spine, and he pointed at the line of text that he had just finished reading. “This is a spell,” he said. “A very popular one in your time, if my records are reliable.”

“Your records?” asked Simon, slightly breathlessly, for Baz was very close.

“My family’s,” said Baz. “We have a whole section in our library dedicated to older, unused spells. Obviously neither old nor unused in _your_ time. Here,” he said, turning the book the other way round, so that Simon could read the words upright. “Do you have your wand?”

Simon nodded, and retrieved it from his fob pocket. Baz talked Simon through the purpose of the spell—to reveal the true nature of things, in people and objects both—and the words to place the most emphasis on for the best results. He then told Simon to try and cast it on something in the room. Simon looked about himself, searching for things that appeared as they were not. There was the hay in their stacks—which certainly looked exactly like hay in their stacks—there was Baz, there were the floorboards beneath them and the slanted, beamed roof above…

Simon pointed his wand at a corner of the roof, and, pushing some of his magic into his words, said, _**“Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence!”**_ There was a faint sound of cracking wood, then, and a second later, a part of the roof broke off from its place and fell to the floor. Simon jumped up and went to find the place that it had landed, and looked up—a part of the night sky was now visible through a very small crack in the roof. Simon groaned.

“Well, my da _was_ suspecting there was a leak here,” he said thoughtfully.

“What did you cast it on?” asked Baz, from his place on the floor.

“Oh,” said Simon. “You can’t see it, can you?”

Baz raised a very finely-shaped eyebrow. “All I see is you standing by the Jaguar.”

Simon exclaimed, and immediately leapt back from the spot. Baz jerked in consequent surprise.

 _“Jaguar?”_ said Simon, perhaps too loudly for that time of morning. “Why’s a jaguar in your car house?”

A few moments passed in which Baz merely blinked at Simon, uncomprehending. Then his expression cleared, and he began to laugh.

“Aleister Crowley,” he said. “Snow, no—not an actual—how do you know about jaguars?”

“They have them,” said Simon. “In the zoo. My mate told me about them.”

“Snow, I meant my father’s _car_.”

Simon stared at Baz (who was still laughing), and attempted to recall what Baz had told him about cars. He could not detect the slightest resemblance between them and large, wild cats. “Your father’s _car_?” he asked, utterly incredulous. “Why’s the car a jaguar?”

“It’s the _brand_ of the car, Snow. Crowley—would you come back here?” Baz’s mirth had subsided some already, and he was now smiling at Simon in that way that reminded Simon of his ability to blush.

“Your lot is mad as all hell,” said Simon, as he went to Baz again and sat himself down in the same position as before. “Cars that are jaguars… cars that fly! Moving photographs. _Google_.” But he smiled even as he said these things, for they were still impossible to him, too incredible to be joked of. “First time you told me about these things—hell, _every_ time you tell me—I think you must be drawing the long bow. These things aren’t possible yet, yeah? They’re—no one would’ve even thought about them being possible…” He shook his head, and shook his shoulders, and said, quietly, “S’just brilliant.”

He could feel the weight of Baz’s eyes on him. They felt steady and thoughtful, for they were always steady and thoughtful. And a moment later, he spoke.

“You’re so lovely,” he said, in a voice as awed as Simon’s had just been.

Simon looked up—and straight into Baz’s eyes. They were beautiful eyes, even if they had looked slightly foreign to Simon on their first encounter, drooping down towards the outer corners to give something of a sleepy look to them. But in that moment, as Baz looked at him, there was no sign of fatigue. There was a wonder instead, an aching tenderness, a tired sparkle. Simon understood what he saw, as he had never understood anything in his life. And a familiar tightness began to manifest in his chest. He let his eyes fall back to the floor.

“Did I say something wrong?” asked Baz then, very quietly.

“No,” said Simon. He worried at his bottom lip, and his finger traced an unidentifiable shape into the floor. “No, it’s—bah, no, m’just being balmy.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” said Baz.

What was he thinking? Simon himself could not know. There were times when he felt that being with Baz was the simplest, most logical thing in the world, and things that were simple, and logical, did not have to be thought of. But they were times in which he was able to be only a feeling, rather than a man. A feeling was not what his parents had raised, nor what the church had taught, nor what the Pitches had hired. Feelings did not have responsibilities or a society that they had to fit into.

“Baz,” said Simon. “Is it…” He paused, and struggled with something inside of himself, and then tried again, “Is it _wrong_ , what we’re doing?” And he found the courage again to face Baz’s silvery eyes.

They appeared to soften. “No, love,” he said, and the word took a hold of Simon’s heart.

He had not asked that question of Baz before. But he had certainly asked it of himself, had turned it over and over in his own mind, ever since he had realised what it was he truly felt for Baz. It had happened weeks ago. Baz had been reading to him, in the calm, golden lamplight. His voice had been rising and falling in the surrounding quiet, his face and shoulders had been gentle in the early hours of the morning, and Simon had been watching him, drawn in as a moth is to a flame—and his heart had understood before his mind. But when his mind had finally caught up, and made sense of the delightful, warm fullness in his chest… a flush of cold had overtaken him. It had chilled him completely, from his chest to his toes.

He had jumped up, startling Baz in the process, and made some excuse for his having to leave, the details of which he could not later recall, and perhaps did not even give to Baz. All he knew, then, was that he must be rid of Baz, and that place, for it was making him feel very strangely. But the coldness had not released him as graciously as Baz had. He had lain awake that night, fighting with himself. Any lingering warmth had seemed incongruous and even more damning than before, for, as he had tried to tell himself, they should have been for a woman instead. He had vowed to himself, then, never to return to the spot at which he and Baz met during the witching hour, and that he would do his utmost to avoid seeing the place altogether, that he would not be reminded.

But it was no good. The imprint had been left, the effect made. Baz’s eyes, his intelligent questions, his laugh when he was truly happy—these were things that Simon could not simply forget. The next night, he had not been able to sleep until the witching hour had begun, and when it had, there was no denying the pull that he had felt to go to the barn. To Baz.

When Simon had arrived, cautious, helpless, many minutes late, there Baz had been, with an uncertainty in his stance but a certain gentleness in his eyes. He had said Simon’s name. He had asked him, “Are you alright?” And Simon had known he was as good as his.

“It used to feel wrong,” he confessed now, very quietly. “Used to feel like the end of the world… but… not anymore. Most days, now… you feel like the rightest thing in the world.” Simon laughed, weakly, and extended a hand out into the sliver of space between their two laps, with his palm facing upward. “And you’re not even _here_ … but you’re the best thing.”

“Simon,” said Baz, sounding very much like he was pleading. For what, Simon could not articulate, but he knew. Baz reached his hand out to Simon’s then and let it hover above his palm, but did not move it any lower, for perhaps it would hurt more to truly see that they could not hold each other; it is always easier on the heart if it is able to pretend.

“I just want to kiss you,” said Simon softly. “I want—so many things, but most of all that.”

“Simon,” said Baz, again. “I know.”

“Do you?” asked Simon, and everything he felt was in his voice, there for Baz to hear.

“I want _you_ ,” said Baz, almost feverishly. “All of you. Here, with me. And I’m still looking.”

“For a spell?”

“If that’s what it would take.”

“And you think you’ll find it?”

“I…” Baz faltered, and there was the answer. “I don’t know. But I want to go to Watford, at least, and look through my mother’s office. There might be something.”

“Yeah,” said Simon quietly. “Might be.”

How much either of them really believed it was a question that neither voiced. And even if, by a miraculous turn of fortune, Baz did indeed find a spell, or a ritual, that could allow them to be together, it would never be simple. For they each had families, and dreams, and lives that they knew how to live in their own times. There was no life that Simon could give Baz that was worth him coming to Simon. And the promises of a freer existence for Simon in Baz’s time, one in which he and Baz could be as they were together, honestly and without fear, was still an existence without Simon’s family—his Charlotte, his mother—in it.

There was not an ending that existed that allowed both young men to be happy. There was no ending that was entirely good. And perhaps it did not matter.

In front of Simon, a pearlescent boy from over a hundred years in the future sat, holding his hand out in an imitation of a touch, and Simon knew, at least, that they loved each other. And if all he would ever have was this, an hour in the night when the world slept and the young man he loved was alive to him, then that was what he would accept.

He would accept it gratefully.

**Author's Note:**

> Meanings of old slang terms used in this fic:  
> Mind the grease - Let me pass, please  
> All-overish - vaguely uneasy; apprehensive  
> Draw the long bow - to exaggerate in telling stories
> 
> Thank you for reading! Find me on [tumblr](https://sbazzing.tumblr.com)!


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